Memoirs: The Perils of Christine

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The Keeler story recalls Fanny Hill and The Perils of Pauline more than the Duke of Windsor. The first installment tells how a teen-age Christine modeled a bikini for a male photographer who happened to wear women's shoes. Her further progress: a "black sweeper" deflowers her at 15 or 16, an American soldier gets her pregnant, a landlord spills his "vodka breath" all over her face, a wealthy Arab introduces her to Osteopath Stephen Ward, he introduces her to high society. In the second installment, she recalls a night with Soviet Spy Eugene Ivanov: "Then I threw all reserve to the winds. He was my perfect specimen of a man, a huggy-bear of a man, and he wanted me."

Stirred by the uproar over the series, Christine took another fling at writing. In a letter to The Times, she decried "all these important gentlemen" who would deny her the right to give her side of the scandal. "Perhaps," she added, "I am supposed to have been flushed away down the drain forever." Her choice of imagery seemed apt.

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